PG&E to pay millions for two more California wildfires. More claims are still pending
PG&E Corp. agreed Wednesday to pay $43.4 million to settle claims filed by local governments over a 2019 wildfire that ravaged California’s wine country and a deadly fire last year in Shasta County.
The settlement resolves claims by cities and counties from the damages wrought by the Kincade Fire, which forced the evacuation of nearly 190,000 residents of Sonoma County, and the Zogg Fire west of Redding, which killed four people.
But PG&E is still on the hook for an estimated $600 million in claims that could be filed by property owners and other victims of the two wildfires. PG&E also faces criminal charges filed by the Sonoma County district attorney in the Kincade Fire and is under investigation by prosecutors in Shasta County.
The legal fallout over the Kincade and Zogg fires underscores California’s largest utility’s continuing struggles to keep its equipment from sparking major wildfires. Damages from a string of disasters, capped by the catastrophic Camp Fire of 2018, plunged PG&E into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
PG&E emerged from bankruptcy last summer, having set up a $13.5 billion fund to compensate wildfire victims, but that fund won’t cover the costs of Kincade, Zogg or other fires that ignited after the bankruptcy case started.
The utility said the settlement over the Zogg and Kincade fires will help PG&E and the local government agencies move forward.
“When I joined PG&E earlier this year, I said that I wanted to make it right and make it safe for our customers and communities. We are pleased to have reached these resolutions, so that we can help our hometowns as they recover,” said Chief Executive Officer Patti Poppe in a prepared statement.
The Kincade Fire was the largest in California in 2019, burning through 77,000 acres and destroying 352 homes and other buildings.
Although no one died, the October 2019 fire was a major public relations headache for PG&E. With high winds kicking up, the utility shut off power to much of Sonoma County as a fire-prevention measure — but chose not to cut power to its transmission lines, thinking they posed less of a threat because they’re located higher off the ground than neighborhood lines and considered less of a threat.
Cal Fire determined that a faulty transmission tower sparked the Kincade Fire. PG&E has since re-evaluated its shutoff policy and said it’s more likely to de-energize transmission lines during wind storms.
The Zogg Fire last September killed four people and burned 56,000 acres. Cal Fire said a PG&E distribution line made contact with a pine tree, igniting the fire.
This story was originally published May 26, 2021 at 11:32 AM.